Travel Bug (6 page)

“Andrew, wake up,” said an oddly familiar voice.

“What?” I asked groggily.

I was scared, the voice wasn’t familiar and it was not at the other side of the door. It was coming from inside of my bedroom!

“Relax, son, it’s me.”

“Father, is that really you?”

“No.”

“What?”

“It’s not, father…”

“Who is it, then?”

“It’s great grandfather.”

This was truly a miracle of time travel. I had watched the man in a crib a few depressed hours before and now was his second coming. He was an old man, easily in his sixties coming to see his great grandson.

“We don’t have a lot of time, son.”

“What do you mean?” I asked him.

“Look, you’re still a child. I will come back when you’re twenty or better yet twenty one so we can at least have a drink for Christ sake.”

“I’ve already drank from the well of the damned, the intoxication of cheating time itself or at least a hallucinating drug drink that makes absinthe look like soda pop.”

“That’s strong drink,” he said, laughing.

“What do you want from me?”

“You need to avoid the unnamed species and essentially forget this evening for the next eight years and then we will do some serious work.”

“Do you mean traveling through time?” I asked Harold Godley.

“You’re damn right I do, Andrew.”

“I’ll miss you,” I said.

“Andrew, I’ve watched you for so long… even watching you watching me in the crib…”

“So you are not against cheating time?”

“Oh, hell yes I am… this is a really stupid idea for us to get together…”

“Why do it, then?”

“You’re my great grandson and I love you. Only you and I have the vision to cheat nature. We alone have the will to solve the murders of your parents and ultimately find out what’s really going on here with this mystery.”

“Agreed,” I answered him.

“If it helps you pass the time, then just remember I love you just like your parents did but I’m coming back from the dead and they ain’t.”

“I see,” I said, crying.

“Don’t cry, I will return in eight years, I promise.”

“I may go through time travel withdrawal and what if the machines break and the bug wakes up to life again to devour the hired help?”

“I can’t explain now but the best thing you can do is just leave it alone, it’s quite self-sustaining, I assure you.”

“The temptation of time travel, Harold……”

“I can’t make you do anything, son. My best advice is to wait eight years and use the old fashioned time traveling methods during this long waiting period.”

“What time travel method would that be, Harold?” I asked.

“You’re an educated and intelligent man, I’m truly disappointed,” he answered me.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Embrace the ultimate rebels, not the idiot box or radio. Allow Socrates, Shakespeare, Yeats, Marlowe, Aquinas, Dante, Poe and Twain to take you on their time traveling journeys.”

“Goodbye, my great grandfather, for now.”

“So long son,” he said.

“I……”

“Goodbye, Andrew, I love you more than anything in this whole terrible world and I really will see you in eight years…”

“I… just want to say…”

He was gone, I heard him swallow what most have been a fairly large piece of meat from the unnamed species.

“Goodbye, Harold. I just met you but I love you, too.”

Eight years flew by but yet seemed to take an entire lifetime until I could see Harold Godley again. I was very much looking forward to seeing his beautiful face, the face of family again. The disappointment I felt for my doomed and ignorant parents was overwhelming at times. So much so that I had often thought I wanted to follow them to the grave but Harold Godley helped me over that one! It was such an unnatural honor to know my great grandfather and I studied so hard, extremely hard in the arts and sciences just to be able to converse with him. The wonderful world of classic theologians and authors would always have a place in my heart; the classic writers as well as the writings of great scientists like Mr. Charles Darwin.

I was twenty-one, in the beginning of an undergraduate program at a prestigious private school. All I did was go the lake, a public park after taking my final exam for a philosophy class that I particularly enjoyed. I sat on the park bench with a big smile on my face. I knew that I had aced the test.

“Hello, son,” said a strange voice behind me.

“Hi,” I answered.

“My coming was foretold to you by… me… son…”

“I know, great grandfather,” I said.

“Good.”

“What now?” I asked him.

“Let’s go home and take a bite out of that fucking bug,” he said.

“Yes,” I answered him.

We did do just that.

“This mansion is still even bigger than I remember,” said Harold.

We went to the mansion’s basement, its cave and witnessed the perfectly formed and frozen time bug.

“I know who murdered your mom and dad,” said Harold.

“So do I, it was the Rapture woman, wasn’t it?”

“I think so. Let’s bite the bug and find out.”

We did.

“I know what that unholy thing can do,” said Jezebel to my parents.

The two impeccably dressed and thin rich people starred at the obese, half crazed looking woman in her long black dress. If it was any longer, she would have tripped over it. How I wish to God that would have happened.

“How did you discover it?” my father asked.

“The point is I did and you’re going to need to kill it, get rid of it, the thing is a tool of the devil……”

“No, it’s a very old bug,” said my Father.

“It’s prehistoric in fact,” said Mother.

“I’m going to go to the police,” she said.

“That’s fine, if that’s what you think is right,” said my Father.

“I’ve seen him…”

“Who did you see?” my Father asked her.

“Him,” she said.

“Listen……”

She interrupted my mother from speaking another word. “Look, I have a large piece of the leg, enough for a thousand trips and a thousand bizarre stories…”

“Whatever, you think is right,” said my dad.

“Like my husband said, I…”

“I saw him!” she shouted. My mother’s eyes rolled to the back of her head and she fainted.

“Oh my God!” my father shouted.

“I saw him……”

My dad fainted right beside her. She looked at them like she expected them to die but they didn’t.

She was very disappointed by that.

“Please don’t do this,” my father pleaded.

He couldn’t move and she pleaded back again about how terribly, terribly sorry she was.

“I can’t watch this,” I said.

“You should probably close your eyes now,” said my great grandfather.

The Rapture woman cut their throats with a knife, a small one but obviously it was big enough to do the job. We wished ourselves back home to the Godley family mansion in our present time. It took a moment.

“I met him,” said the woman from Rapture.

My heart was beating so rapidly and I found myself filled with utter terror and a cold blooded desire for sadistic vengeance. The terrible thrill seeking shakes of other journeys were not here. My hands shook for entirely other reasons. I also had no time to look into the cursed thing’s red eyes or to feel its hairy frozen black legs. The thought of it waking up and destroying a town like a giant monster movie from the 1950’s wasn’t there this time.

“That fucking bitch, I’ll fucking kill her!” I shouted and it echoed throughout the cave.

“I would imagine that you are the type of man who ordinarily disapproves of such profanity. You are a man of the cloth, Andrew. I mean at least that you will be.”

“Yes,” I said.

“We’re going to have to make ourselves her bounty hunter through time, Andrew. The law cannot get involved in this. I love this country but I don’t trust one single government.”

“I know.”

“Andrew, God only knows what would happen if this prehistoric creature got in the wrong hands.”

“Harold, it already has.”

“Sorry, you’re absolutely right. I meant to say if it fell in hundreds or thousands of wrong hands. We don’t know if she is trying to run away from the law or change history for the much, much worse!”

“She’s out there and we have to find her.”

“We will, Andrew, we will.”

“She might be trying to find us as well.”

“Either way, we will find her then,” said Harold grimly.

The Rapture woman or the white haired witch as we came to know her was almost as sad as she was terrifying. In fact, dear reader, she was almost as complex as she was simple. I knew from the beginning that we would have to stop her. It wouldn’t be easy. She wouldn’t just melt if we threw a bucket of water on her. Are they revelations or hallucinations? I often wondered what kind of stories she would come up with. The angry return home made the average human being curse like a drunken sailor with anger. No particular reason except for curiosity but I wondered if she swore. Still, once you might think murder is okay, I don’t know why a few swear words would keep you from the kingdom of God.

“What do you want to do next?” I asked Harold.

“Andrew,” he looked at me and then glanced at the hideous unnamed species. “I want to move on now and bring her to justice.”

“You don’t mean…”

“I mean our justice,” he said.

“Will we kill her?”

“Andrew, I don’t know. I hope not……”

“What else can we do?”

“If we destroy the evidence, people will think she’s an even bigger lunatic than she already is.”

“My God, Harold, you’re right,” I said.

“We have some work to do,” he said.

“Where do we start?” I asked.

“We start at the beginning,” he answered.

We did.

The Rapture woman grew up on a small farm in Tennessee. We went there. There were two lovely sisters, very pretty and the oldest about sixteen years old or so. Jezebel was the opposite of Cinderella, fat and homely and extremely sad.

“I made your steak, pa,” she said.

The old man talked about being a widower and addressed the three sisters. They discussed the apple farm they had, there were apparently always apples to eat even during harsh times. There were far more recessions and economic hardships than the great depression we hear so much about.

“Can I have some steak, pa?” asked one of the attractive sisters.

“One piece, that’s it,” he answered.

“How about me?” the other pretty little maid asked.

“One tiny piece,” he answered her.

Jezebel looked like she was going to say something.

“Now, girl,” her father said. “You’re as fat as the fat calf they cooked for the prodigal son! You don’t need no fatty meats, sugar. Just have some apples. When you’re done, I want you to go straight outside the door to pick some more. You’ve got lots of work to do and Jesus hates those who will not work. Those who will not work…”

“Shall not eat,” the girl answered, obviously fighting back tears.

“That’s right,” he said.

The tears she fought had lost the battle and she balled her eyes out.

“Now, girlie don’t be like that!” her father exclaimed.

“Sorry, pa,” she answered him.

“The lord has blessed your sisters with the same feminine wiles that he bestowed on your late mama, God rest her soul.”

“I know that,” she said with a voice full of pain.

“Look, you’re just going to have to suffer in this life. That’s okay because you’ve accepted the lord. Your life just won’t be very nice but life is short. Your mama is dead already.”

“Yes, pa,” she said.

“Good, now clear the table, sugar.”

I looked at the horrified expression on my great grandfather’s face. It was something like… compassion… pity.

“Pa?” asked the young girl from Rapture, Tennessee.

“Yes?” he asked very impatiently.

“Can I lick the bones when ya’ll are done?”

“Ain’t that kind of beneath you, girl?”

“No.”

“Then I reckon you can,” he said, shaking his head at her.

“Christ, I almost feel sorry for her, the woman who grew up to kill my grandson,” said Harold.

“You know I’m almost there myself,” I said with regret.

We watched her with great sympathy as she ate those disgusting bones and the proceeded to cry herself hysterical right there in their tiny apple orchard.

“Let’s move on, sir,” said my great grandfather.

“What?”

“We’re going to go back home and then eat from…”

“Harold, whoever eats from the bug discovers forbidden fruit, indeed…”

“Spoken like a true Jesuit with secret doubts.”

“Yes,” I answered him.

“Let’s move on, son, it’s time to move on.”

“So it is.”

We did.

The skinny man William was beat to a pulp by his crazy wife almost every night. This was particularly true when he had been out drinking with his buddies. Instead of coming home drunk and beating his wife, she would beat him for being a fun loving drunk. He drank to forget who he had made the mistake of marrying. This was no sane relationship.

“I just want to drink!” William protested to his insane, sadistic and deeply hurt spouse.

“This is the devil’s doing, ever since they said Christ drank wine and not grape juice, this is what we got!”

She punched him repeatedly in the face. He spoke up. “You know, honey, he did turn water into wine and they accused him of being a drunkard at the wedding feast of Cana.”

She hit him so hard that she gave him a damn good black eye.

“Honey, please, listen…”

“No, you listen,” she protested. “Pastor Fred said that our lord drank only grape juice, hated drinkers and even had short hair. He hated socialism, loved capitalism and would have made a great American.”

“Are you sure Pastor Fred isn’t the real alcoholic?”

This time she kicked him in the groin and the pain on his face was profound.

“That’s not funny!” she screamed.

“He… would have to have a God damn time machine to verify those beliefs; I know you don’t even believe in evolution……”

“No,” she answered him.